Standard #9: Professional Learning & Ethical Practice
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A core part of any educator's practice is the continual dedication to professional development, and focusing on broad-scale justice in the sector they teach in. As it is my goal to create the finest learning opportunities possible for my students, I am continually vigilant about ensuring my own competency, connections and community within the area I teach. This has taken shape in many ways, from conference-style festival participation around the world as a performer and composer, connecting with some of the finest musical minds out there, to targeted advocacy work in the field of artistic justice within classical music. Read more about this work below!
(above) Me with the percussion section and faculty advisor Matt Ward, percussionist with the American Modern Ensemble and professor of music at Manhattan School of Music, at the Mostly Modern Festival in Saratoga Springs, NY. I attended this festival as a percussion fellow, collaborative pianist, and resident composer.
(above) Me with the percussion section and chief audio engineer for the Lake George Music Festival in Lake George, NY, following a particularly technical concert. I attended this festival as a percussion fellow and composition auditor.
Professional Learning
It has been my honor to be selected for many prestigious musical festival and residency opportunities throughout my time in college. These have included the Miami Beach Classical Music Festival, Atlantic Music Festival, Mostly Modern Festival, Lake George Festival, RED NOTE Music Festival, Alba Music Festival, ICEBERG New Music Institute, Percussion On the Rock Seminar, National Music Festival, National Orchestral Institute, and others, where I have collaborated with artists from all over the world. At these festivals, I have led workshops on teaching percussion technique, helped to mentor other composers on writing for the various instruments I play, and was able to help influence the programs I passed through.
These programs vastly helped me as an educator - not just to develop my own content-area skills, but vastly expanded the network of teachers I've been able to learn from as an educator. Every musician who passes through these programs is themself an educator - with their own private studio, teaching philosophy, and personal strategies I can learn from. In discussing our respective students, I have vastly deepened my abilities as an educator at these festivals - through the simple practice of networking with experts in the field.
Additionally, the opportunity to assist guest faculty at festivals such as these and gain meaningful experience in the backstage realm of concert production through internship and work-study, has given me tangible experience I can apply to any classroom I step into. I tremendously appreciate the opportunities I've had as a result of these festivals to build the "hard skills" you can't quite get from the practice room.
In and Out of the Classroom
Part of my educational journey at Howard University involved studying piano with Dr. Karen Walwyn, a pivotal figure in the field of modern concert piano performance and one of the world's foremost scholars on the work of Florence Price, the first African-American woman to have a symphony premiered by a major orchestra. I had the privilege to interview Dr. Walwyn surrounding her experience with Price's music and as a musician practicing advocacy - and to get to know more about her story as a pianist.
This interview represents part of the work I've done as a musician to uplift the voices of individuals who have done tremendous work in the fields I study in but are rarely recognized. Despite being an intensely successful and influential composer of her time, Florence Price's music remains drastically underplayed by the orchestras of today. It is my hope to use my classroom as a launching point for music that is too-often passed over such as the work of Price, and learning from scholars like Dr. Walwyn is immensely helpful in achieving that goal.
Walwyn Interview.pdf(below) my recorded performance of Florence Price's Piano Sonata in E Minor, a piece learned while studying the definitive recording made by Dr. Walwyn.
Ethical Practice
As part of the research-based advocacy work I've done throughout my time at Howard University, highlighted here is a comprehensive study of diversity in repertoire I conducted through manual combing of the concert programs of three of America's top symphony orchestras. I present here findings on the state of diversity, equity, and inclusion work with regards to concert programming, one of the skills necessary for educators in a music classroom to show up adequately for their students.
Journal 6 - VISUALS.pdfThis is a presentation of the initial stage of findings my project yielded. It accounts for my first phase of data-gathering, a comprehensive review of the programming present in every concert given by the New York Philharmonic from 2020-2022. It paints a stark picture, of composers of color disproportionately sidelined in favor of older, more canonical compositions by White, male composers.
Following the first round of data-gathering, I decided to expand the scope of my research in another wave of cataloguing concert programs to include the National Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, all groups close to where I have been based in Washington, DC, whose concerts I have gone to throughout my time in college. It is with disappointment that I share that these two ensembles, both located in minority-White areas, share the NY Philharmonic's lack of focus on diversity within concert programming, although recent upward trends suggest optimism for the future of classical representation.
Presented here is the culmination of that second stage of research, with an expanded focus on all three orchestras, comparing and contrasting the statistics between them and painting a more holistic picture of concert repertoire across the East Coast. It is my hope that through work like this, I am able to deepen my knowledge of the issues facing marginalized populations within my classroom and content area, and help to use my platform of authority as a teacher to become a catalyst for change, starting in my own concert hall.
PAPER 2 - Words Left Unspoken.pdfPage updated
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